


Freeing Her

by LtLime23



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Addiction, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Loss, Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:29:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28280922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LtLime23/pseuds/LtLime23
Summary: A gift written as part of the MEFFW Secret Santa 2020Samara final personal log prior to resigning from the Justicar Order.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8
Collections: MEFFW Secret Santa Exchange 2020





	Freeing Her

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Actaeus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Actaeus/gifts).



> Written as part of the 2020 MEFFW Secret Santa, my prompt was a sandbox to explore Samara's backstory.
> 
> I apologies that this is neither light, nor fluffy, nor Christmas related. When you explore Samara and pull apart the elements of her life you have no choice (it would appear) than to buckle up and ride the feelings train.
> 
> Errrm, Merry Christmas. . . I guess.

**Armali Council Justicar Order**

**Department of Registrations and Records**

**Date: 24-12-2220**

**Item ref: M377Y-XMA5**

**Description:** Data disc (singular). Hand delivered by Huntress S. C’lause. Item found stacked as part of a cairn like structure located on the southern shore of an unnamed lake on the planet Lesuss.

The disc contains, what is assumed to be, the final personal log of Justicar Order member: Samara.

As per Order doctrine all Order member’s personal possessions are the property of the Asari people. The following transcript is to be made publicly available as directed by the Head of the Department of Registrations and Records, Actaeus.

 **Transcriber:** [Re-dacted]

_[Transcriber notes: the data disc contains a self-recorded interview with the subject, Justicar Samara, using the popular auto-interviewer application VI interface: YourLifeBy: Oprah.]_

**Oprah VI [OP]:** Welcome to YourLifeBy with me Oprah Winfrey. We are now live and recording! Please complete the following sentence; today I am joined by. . .

 **Samara [SA]:** My name is Samara.

 **OP:** Pleased to meet you Samara, how about you tell us a little about yourself?

 **SA:** I am an Asari Justicar, and as directed by my Code must document any actions or intelligence gained through my service which is not already in the public domain prior to resigning from the Order.

_[Notes: The VI appears to datamine the extranet based on key words spoken]_

**OP:** Justicar Samara, that is quite the title, so much has been documented about the Justicars and your Code but nobody is simply their job. I’d like to get to know the woman under the armour. Tell me about your earliest memory?

 **SA:** I feel as if my farthest memory has shifted with the rising tide of time. I am over a thousand years old. The Code demanded I strip myself of all I was to become all I am.

 **OP:** How long have you been a Justicar?

 **SA:** I have served the Order for a little over four centuries.

 **OP:** So, there are 600 years which are unaccounted for. If you are planning on resigning surely it is acceptable to open the door to your old self once more?

 **SA:** I. . . _[sighs]_ , yes I agree it is acceptable.

 **OP:** So, your earliest memory?

 **SA:** I believe I am sat on my Father’s lap. Our home smells of damp from the near permanent rains that fall during the Armali summer. She is tracing patterns on my back to comfort me from the night terrors which woke me. I am focused on the sparkle of the scales on her forearm, they glitter in the prisms of light caught in my tears. I am young and fragile and scared of the dark. She whispers to my mind until it is mirror-smooth calm and all at once I feel stillness as I fall into the deep.

 **OP:** She cared for you deeply.

 **SA:** She did. Both my parents did. The outside world frowned upon our family of course. I recall getting sick at school and my Mother coming to collect me. My Father had already swept me into her arms as I shivered with fever. I shivered again at the look of disgust on the school clerks face as we left. Pure-bloods. For all our intelligence Asari can be so cruel.

 **OP:** You swore yourself to upholding the laws and culture of the Asari, yet I feel as if you don’t entirely agree with what you are protecting?

 **SA:** It is true, in my youth I felt much conflict. When I look back over a thousand years I am unsure what has really changed. Humanity, barely with us for a held breath have lived more than generations of our ancestors.

 **OP:** Go on.

 **SA:** The Asari were selected, bred almost by the Protheans. They left us with a beacon whose teachings were preached as words of gods until we forgot where and how we knew so much. Our trajectory of social and scientific evolution was near vertical, and once we arose. Once we surveyed our surroundings from such a lofty look-out we saw no others but us. Smug, we have plateaued. Maidan to Matron to Matriarch, we do nothing but exist, compounded by a long lifespan. Ask most Asari what their proudest achievement is and many will simply tell you how old they are.

 **OP:** Do you think you are different?

 **SA:** Different? Perhaps. I do not wear arrogance well. It is not that I feel I am ‘better’ than others, simply that I have found my purpose.

 **OP:** Through becoming a Justicar and following your Code.

 **SA:** Those two things are merely expressions of my purpose.

 **OP:** I feel like we’ll come back to this later. Tell me Samara, have you ever been in love?

 **SA:** Once.

 **OP:** Just once?

 **SA:** Just once. I was 328. Full of cynicism and a degree of self-loathing. I had recently discovered a betrayal which led me to slay those I had once considered friends. 

**OP:** Are you referring to the slave traders?

 **SA:** Yes. I struggled after the incident. For many years I only felt disgust.

 **OP:** Disgust at what you’d done? Or what you’d been involved in and hadn’t realised? Nobody could blame you for not knowing sooner.

 **SA:** Those are only minor concerns. I felt disgust at my pleasure. Regardless of whether I was just or right in my actions I enjoyed taking them. There is a darkness to my soul, an aggression which feels untamed and feral at my very core. I have always sat close to it but in that moment, I let it consume me and the ferocity of its power left me. . . elated, with a hungry passion so raw with need I didn’t know how I would ever contain it again.

 **OP:** So, you’re early in your third century and have experienced this, trauma. Where do we go from here?

 **SA:** Into the arms of Athame herself.

 **OP:** It sounds like you’re smiling.

 **SA:** I am. It was her way. Even before I trained as a Justicar I was told I was a powerful biotic, that my precision was excellent and I moved with grace and elegance. But I was disjointed and unco-ordinated compare to Loa. The very air seemed to settle around her and the planets and stars orbited her in perfect harmony. She was always in. . . balance, no push or pull simply a purity of equilibrium between herself and the world.

 **OP:** You fell in love quickly.

 **SA:** The instant she looked at me. She saw through my everything and I inhaled her space, her words and eventually her kiss until she swam in my veins. She taught me not to fear myself. Loa could tame my darkness with a single smile, she helped me learn to embrace the terrors which had woken me as a child by showing them only kindness and compassion.

 **OP:** What did you bring her?

 **SA:** She said that I anchored her to the world in a way gravity never had. When we embraced she found permeance and a certainty in herself as if before we fell into one another she was simply riffs and currents in stardust.

 **OP:** You miss her deeply.

 **SA:** I. . . the Code. . .

 **OP:** The loss of your bond-mate is a scar in the fabric of your universe.

 **SA:** Y-yes. Her loss is the heaviest of weights and one I willingly and proudly carry.

 **OP:** It is noted that you had three daughters with your bond-mate, do you feel a similar weight of loss having chosen to serve as a Justicar?

 **SA:** You do not choose to serve as a Justicar. Circumstance dictates it to be the only viable path upon which to tread.

 **OP:** Can you explain?

 **SA:** It is, a long story.

 **OP:** We have time.

 **SA:** You are correct. Loa and I were gifted three beautiful daughters, Rila, Morinth and Falere.

 **OP:** Did you carry all three?

 **SA:** No. We discussed this at length, I was fearful of passing on my struggles to our daughters. Loa carried Rila and Falere. Becoming a parent forced a fundamental shift in me though and when Loa suggested we expand our family once more I was willing to carry.

 **OP:** All carried the genetic mutation associated with being an Ardat-Yakshi.

 **SA:** Indeed. Much is misunderstood of the Ardat-Yakshi. I believe all Asari are capable of killing a partner during a meld of any kind. However, not all Asari are predisposed to find ecstasy in that moment or be driven to chaos by the incessant need to hunt.

 **OP:** How did you and Loa cope?

 **SA:** We felt the warning signs early in the girls lives. We built the family home in the foothills surrounding the Ardat-Yakshi monastery on Lesuss, near a small lake and Yik forests. The girls had a happy childhood playing freely. They schooled at the monastery with Loa serving as a doctor. I operated as a freelancer but limited my contracts to those of Huntress cadres. We did our best to be a normal family, we were a normal family.

 **OP:** What changed?

 **SA:** Morinth found her purpose.

_[The above is followed by 34.2 seconds of silence.]_

**SA:** Falere and Rila found contentment in their existence they were, I suppose, typical Asari. Rila a talented artist honed her craft over centuries while Falere followed Loa by studying medicine. Morinth’s unease with herself simply seemed to grow.

 **OP:** How did this manifest? In violence and unrest?

 **SA:** No, quite the opposite. Morinth was beautiful, full of curiosity and delicate wonderment. She pulled the poetry from the breeze between leaves and the ripples of raindrops on water. She was a romantic, melancholic soul.

 **OP:** Much like yourself.

 **SA:** Yes. She was a reflection of a path within myself I had always known was there but chose not to follow. 

**OP:** And like you she suffered with holding that vulnerable heart inside herself?

 **SA:** Indeed. People often assume I am angry or enraged by Morinth’s actions and it is that which has driven me to pursue the actions I have. But, it is quite the opposite. I am overwhelmed with grief for the little girl I lost.

 **OP:** How did you lose her?

 **SA:** She fell in love. Just like her Mother. She fell in love in a moment and in that moment her chaos started to consume her. As I’m sure all addicts will attest, there is a point where you believe you are in control. That when pressed against the precipice of choice, you will always have the strength to step back and turn away from the edge.

 **OP:** Unfortunately, the heart doesn’t work like that.

 **SA:** It does not. I don’t blame either of them, however, I do believe the teacher whom Morinth forged a connection should have done better to protect herself. But, the heart wants. Both knew the risks. Loa came home to find them together. She tried to pull Morinth away and break the meld but it was too late, this moment had been building for months most likely and we had no idea.

 **OP:** I imagine it would have been difficult for the whole family.

 **SA:** Loa and myself felt we had failed our family. Rila and Falere refused to leave the monastery or even see us, they were suddenly terrified of themselves. Morinth found herself trapped between her guilt and devasting heartbreak with only the insatiable, sickening itch to fall into that moment again for company. For years she wrestled with herself. Beating herself physically and mentally trying to find a path that didn’t lead to more suffering, trying to rip the Ardat-Yakshi from herself.

 **OP:** There was nothing you could have done.

 **SA:** I wish either of us could find comfort in that notion.

 **OP:** What finally drove Morinth to give in to her, condition?

 **SA:** There was an accident. I’ve lost count of the number of times we found Morinth passed out and shaking from an overdose or curled up watching the blood drain from her arm as if she wanted to die but had to feel every moment of life leave her to be satisfied. One day she attempted a much more, certain, method. I woke to find her breaking into my weapons locker. I spoke calmly with her, told her I loved her.

 **OP:** We can move on if this is too difficult to talk about.

 **SA:** Regardless if I speak it or not, the outcome won’t change. Loa joined us. The three of us spoke, we were able to calm Morinth, she agreed to a plan of medication, of solitude, anything to help calm her storm. She wanted to be strong for us but was still ravaged by guilt and overwhelmed by the thought that she could never love and if she could never love then what was there left to live for? In the end she came to herself, broke down in tears. The pistol in her hand suddenly a bolt of lightening she threw it across the room.

It was an accident.

 **OP:** You didn’t leave Loa and your family to become a Justicar.

 **SA:** No. The Goddess chose to take them from me. _[sighs]_ I did what I could.

 **OP:** But it wasn’t enough.

 **SA:** No. Loa died in my arms en-route to the medical facility. Morinth left me that night too.

 **OP:** Entry to the Justicar Order is only permitted to those who have suffered such injustice that there is no means for conventional legal redress.

 **SA:** Is there any greater injustice than having your ability to love wholly, completely and freely stripped of you by the simple act of being born?

 **OP:** No, I don’t suppose there is. Your pursuit of Morinth over centuries and your exploits as an exemplar Justicar are the subject of numerous articles but I feel as if all of these are fundamentally flawed.

 **SA:** I was not seeking to punish Morinth.

 **OP:** You were freeing her.

 **SA:** No, she freed me.

 **OP:** What comes next?

 **SA:** I will find myself once more, floating on the mirror-smooth surface filled with nothing but calmness and certainty as Loa’s whispers guide me to finally embrace eternity.


End file.
